Page 405 - RUICHSS 2023 Proceeding

University of Ruhuna ISSN: 2706-0063
Matara, Sri Lanka

742 from the 3000 level (third year) and 402 from the 4000 level (fourth year) registered

under the 2022/23 academic year. To guarantee the representativeness of the sample out of
a total of 1,841 undergraduates, the sample was made up of 10% of the population with 184

sample units proportionately, whose distribution by levels is the one shown in Table 1.

Table 1: The Sample of the Study

Level (Year of study) Population Sample
2000 level 697 70

3000 level 742 74

4000 level 402 40
Total 1,841 184

Source: FHSS_UOR, 2023 & Authors’ calculation, 2023

The questionnaire, which was based on the scale created by Rodriguez-Martin and Alvarez-

Arregui, was adopted. It consists of a series of items related to the educational response

towards undergraduates concerning their peers with disabilities and uses a Likert-type scale
with four response options based on the degree of agreement (from lowest to highest) (Martín

& Arre, 2013). The instrument has shown satisfactory psychometric qualities of validity and
reliability.

It served as the study's initial section and contained basic information identifying items

organised by gender, year of study, number of peers with educational needs they are engaged

with and whether they have received any training activities related to the support of peers
with educational needs after they got registered in higher education. In the second part,

twenty-eight items were used to identify the barriers that hinder educational inclusion into
SWDs.

The sample frame of the study was based on the students’ registration list of the faculty under

the 2022/23 academic year. The primary data collected through an online Google form

representing each level and the required units were selected by using a two-stage stratified

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